Johnston, R.I., Detective Raymond Pingitore, now retired, was the lead investigator in the golf course murders of Jason Burgeson and Amy Shute.

Frank Mulligan

The Ford Explorer was traveling the wrong way on a one-way Providence street a little before 2 a.m. on that June morning.

A police officer saw the SUV and could recognize the driver – Kenneth Day – known in police parlance as a “frequent flyer.”

In other words, he’d had his problems with the law in the past.

But the officer waved him on.

Within 10 minutes another officer spotted Day. He, too, waved him on.

What they didn’t know was that Day, 21, and accomplice Harry Burdick, 21, were holding the car’s owner, Jason Burgeson, 20, of Lakeville, and his girlfriend, Amy Shute, 21 of Coventry, R.I., at gunpoint.

Forty minutes later Jason and Amy, who only a few hours earlier had been enjoying a night out with friends including Jason’s sister, Kellie, were shot to death at a golf course under construction.

Johnston, R.I., Detective Raymond Pingitore, now retired, was the lead investigator. He remembered being called to the site that afternoon at 1 p.m. There was no weapon and no apparent evidence. There were just tire tracks leaving the secluded spot that Pingitore described as a huge hole in the ground, “like a fishbowl.”

It was the start of Pingitore’s seven-year involvement in the murder case, which ended when Day’s final appeal was denied last August. Day will never leave prison alive.

Pingitore described the case during a visit to Burgeson’s hometown library Thursday night with co-author Paul Lonardo. Their book on the events that led to the murder of “two great kids,” and the investigation, arrest and subsequent convictions of the five strangers responsible is called, “Thrill Killers.”

Didn’t like the title

“For the record,” Pingitore told the residents gathered in the library’s Great Ponds Gallery who came out despite the evening’s incessant, torrential rainfall, “I didn’t want that title.”

He wanted: “Carjacked: Innocence Lost,” but Lonardo, a veteran fiction writer, noted that the publisher makes that call. He added, “You can’t judge a book by the cover.”

Their intent was not to glamorize the glaringly senseless killings or the killers.

Interrogating Day was like “talking with the devil,” Pingitore said, adding that Day got his kicks during trials “making snide remarks under his breath and blowing kisses at the families” of Jason and Amy.

Together, the killers are “five of the most heinous people you’d ever want to meet on earth, with no moral compass whatever. No conscience.”

Pingitore’s been on a 30-city radio tour to promote the book that stretched to San Francisco, and included stops in England and Canada, but said he had qualms about coming to Lakeville. “I didn’t want to stir anything up and cause any more grief for the family.”

He wants people to come away from the book with the awareness that “the underbelly of society is out there” and can reveal itself at any time, “even on a trip to Cumberland Farms or the Lakeville Library at night.”

That June night in 2000 while Jason made plans to get together with Amy and friends in Providence, Day, Burdick, Gregory Floyd, 19, Sammie Sanchez, 20, and Raymond Anderson, 19, made plans to go out and rob someone at gunpoint. Their idea of “a great time.”

Their victims “could have been you – anyone,” Pingitore said.

They cruised around Providence looking for prey, then took to the streets on foot to save on gas, Pingitore said.

At one point they came up behind two women and a man at an ATM, but a security guard thought something was up. He stepped out of a club and yelled, “Is everything all right?”

The would-be robbers ran away.

The trio at the ATM had not the slightest notion they were being sized up, Pingitore said.
Steal a car for ride home

Later, the quintet’s plans had degenerated to simply stealing a car. Jason and Amy, having said good night to their friends and Jason’s sister, had parked the Explorer, and were talking. Floyd, who had the gun, and Burdick, who wanted to steal the car since Sanchez was balking at giving him a lift home, approached.

In a “split second, it turned,” and Floyd and Burdick decided to take the vehicle and Jason and Amy, as well, ordering them to come for the ride at gunpoint. Pingitore said they conversed with their victims in the Ford to “put them at their ease,” asking where they went to school and making small talk.

It was then they drove by the Providence police officers before meeting up with Sanchez and the other two killers. It was Sanchez who suggested the unfinished golf course.

Jason was ordered out of the car and forced to sit nearby.

Day and Anderson got in the car, and robbed Amy of her jewelry, except for a diamond ring that was a gift from her mother, that had in turn been handed down by her grandmother. Day said they were going to sexually assault her. She lied that she was pregnant to elicit mercy.

Then Floyd interceded. He told them they were not to touch her. She was taken from the car and seated with Jason. He clutched her to him.

The five killers debated whether to murder them while the couple listened.

Then Floyd, who moments before shielded Amy, shot Jason in the top of the head. Then he shot Amy, “who knows it’s coming,” Pingitore said.

The cash proceeds from the robbery-murder: $18.

The five killers divvied up the money for gas and went about their lives, “like any other night.” Day, for instance, went home and went to sleep.

Lack of remorse, sense

Amy’s mom, Carol Shute, identified her body the following day. Two detectives traveled to Lakeville and Jason’s mom and dad, Nadine and Ernest Burgeson, and sister identified him from his driver’s license. Lonardo has noted Shute and the Burgesons cooperated in the book’s creation, helping to show the kind of people Jason and Amy were, how they were loved, how they are missed.

With the positive IDs, police were able to get the make of Burgeson’s vehicle and put out a “broadcast” to look for the Ford Explorer.

Five hours after the bodies were discovered, Jason’s Ford Explorer was pulled over in Providence, driven by Floyd, who was with his girlfriend.

Sense was apparently as absent as remorse. The killers didn’t dump the Explorer. They wanted to use it to rob a gas station the next day, Pingitore said. Later, when it was dusted for the killers’ prints, none could be found.

Floyd was brought to the station and interviewed by Pingitore, and was “one of the most courteous people you’d ever want to talk to.” He riddled his answers with “yes, sirs” and “no, sirs.”

They were also “long and convoluted,” and included an initial version where he was preparing to buy the SUV from a hazily described friend for “$300.”

His answers “were not jibing at all.”

Ninety minutes into the interview, police received a call.

It was Harry Burdick, who said he’d heard about the murders through the media and had information for police. He had one question first, “Will I get in trouble?”

Without knowing what he had to say, Pingitore couldn’t promise anything, but Burdick said he’d come in and talk.

Before Burdick’s interview, Pingitore went to Floyd to inform him there was someone else willing to talk.

Floyd’s response, recounted by Pingitore, drew a collective snort of derision from those gathered in the Great Ponds Gallery last week:

“There can’t be. There were no witnesses.”

Nonetheless, Floyd decided to tell what “really happened.” In this version Sanchez “did everything.”

Then it was Burdick’s turn. In his version, he was at the bus stop when Floyd happened by and offered the information that he had been “at a murder.” Burdick said Floyd showed him the gun, and had him “hold it.” Burdick was trying to offer police a reason why they would find his prints on the murder weapon as well as Floyd’s.

The stories fell apart under questioning and all the names came out.

The gun was recovered less than 10 feet from a sleeping Day after a warrant was served at his apartment.

Making the case

The killers were all now in custody, but the case had to be put together.

Police canvassed Providence, getting all the retail store security video that was available. The five killers were caught on tape throughout their predatory meanderings, including “walking up to Jason and Amy five minutes before the robbery.”

Confronted by this and other evidence, all but Day pleaded guilty to avoid the possibility of the death penalty. While Rhode Island has no death penalty, they feared being brought up on a federal carjacking-murder charge that does provide for capital punishment. Burgeson’s car had been manufactured in Georgia and brought to Massachusetts, crossing state lines and opening the door to the federal charge since it had been used in a crime, Pingitore said.

He added, “It was a high-profile case. People were outraged.” Kellie led a letter-writing campaign calling for the death penalty for her brother’s killers.

All but Anderson were sentenced to life without parole. Anderson got 30 years and is required under federal guidelines to serve at least 85 percent of that sentence.

That left Day to deal with.

Pingitore said the application to bring the federal death penalty law was 300 pages long.

The completed application elicited a single-paragraph response from U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft that “it did not meet the criteria.”

If this case did not meet the criteria, Pingitore added, “Then I don’t know what would.”

Day was still tried in federal court with the stakes being life imprisonment, but his case was thrown out by the judge halfway through the proceedings. It could not be proven the killers’ intention had been to kill Jason and Amy when they carjacked the car, according to the judge.

Day, however, could be tried in the Rhode Island court system without triggering double-jeopardy protection and was sentenced to multiple life sentences without possibility of parole.

Asked if the case was depressing to work on, Pingitore said, “The only time I was depressed was when the federal judge threw the case out of court. I felt like I’d let two families down. I knew that I hadn’t, but I felt that way. When it got into state court, the adrenaline started flowing again.”

The five predators’ “pack” mentality first jelled around their plan to rob someone, but shifted to murder at the golf course. “It just took over,” Pingitore said.